The Blood Mirror

But everywhere the clouds folded over, the bright needles flashed again. As they got closer, they were mere needles no more, but tree trunks, massive pillars from the sea to the heavens.

At each point, the flat sea pulsed, throbbed yellow, gathering like a vortex, then cratering downward before exploding into the sky. Yellow luxin shimmered into light, but each pillar was also wreathed in chasing fires, spiraling into the sky.

Each pillar pulsed light for several heartbeats, then blew apart, falling into water and light onto seas now crisscrossed with tremendous waves expanding in rings from the luxin-lightning strikes.

“Orholam have mercy,” someone said.

“This is impossible,” Ben-hadad said.

“It’s happening,” Ferkudi pointed out helpfully.

“No, this is impossible,” Ben-hadad said.

“You smart guys,” Ferkudi said.

The wind died, and the sea abruptly went still and flat as the front edge of the light-storm passed over them.

“What do we do?!” the captain bellowed at them.

Kip tore his eyes away from the storm. Everything that could be secured on the ship had been. The sailors had reefed the sails, trying to give the ship enough propulsion to quarter the waves, but not so much resistance to the wind that the masts broke.

Then Kip saw that everyone was looking at him. As if he had the answers.

“Turtle,” Cruxer said.

At first, Kip thought Cruxer was talking to him, the turtle-bear, the ridiculous beast that he’d come up with as his own avatar and that had ended up somehow tattooed on his forearm, invisible except when he drafted. But the rest of the squad understood. They drew together around Kip, and the green and blue drafters among them began putting luxin shields up around them to protect all of them from the scything rain.

Going below would have been safer, but Cruxer thought Kip was going to figure this out.

We’re facing a force of nature, and they expect me to fix it. Orholam’s balls.

“Why’s it impossible, Ben?” Kip asked.

“Because it’s yellow.” He stopped, as if that were enough to explain the dread on his face.

“And?!” Cruxer demanded.

“The storms come from imbalances. Yellow is the center of the spectrum. It’s the fulcrum. It shouldn’t be possible for the center to be out of balance. So if it is, we are truly—”

But the rest of whatever he said was lost as the sailors screamed out. The captain shouted, “Secure yourselves to—”

A few hundred paces directly ahead, the sea was cratering. Lightning bolts raced low on the water toward the crater, and were sucked in.

With a concussion that shook the galley and knocked down most everyone standing on deck, the sea exploded upward. Fire spiraled around the pillar of light, discharging into bright clouds above.

Discharging.

Kip clambered to his feet. Water and yellow luxin dropped on the ship in bucketsful, sweeping several sailors and half the Mighty off their feet. But it was liquid yellow, thank Orholam. It flashed into light as it hit the deck, blinding but not killing anyone. Whether they would be lucky enough to be hit only by liquid yellow or whether there were solid razors of yellow yet to come, Kip had no idea.

Discharging. Because it was out of balance.

Kip left the turtle, rushing to the prow just in time to feel it rise as the galley climbed a mountainous wave.

“Breaker, get back—” Cruxer shouted.

But the wave was too massive, too fast for the galley to climb. The prow dug into it instead, slowing the ship as suddenly as if it had hit a wall. Winsen was thrown off his feet. Kip snatched his wrist as he tumbled and was drafting before he knew it. He manacled one of his own wrists to a line connecting the prow and mainmast and the other to Winsen’s wrist.

Then water hit them like the slap of a sea demon’s tail.

Kip and Winsen were blasted back, and then up the line, into the air, halfway up to the mainmast. Blinded, and with lungs half-full of water, they were dropped, zipping down the line back to the deck as the wave crest passed and the prow suddenly dove, racing down the back side of the wave.

The rest of the Mighty were still crouched, clinging to the deck in a low, luxin-imbued circle like a tick burrowed into the ship’s skin.

As soon as Kip’s feet hit the deck, he was running. He threw Winsen toward the squad, not even aware of releasing the solid yellow luxin he’d drafted—solid yellow? That fast?

He leapt over the forecastle rail out onto the beakhead as the ship bottomed out between the waves, and lashed himself down with yellow luxin as the ship began its climb again.

A deep breath, and the beakhead plunged into the next wave, the waters pouring over him, scouring at him as if he were an offensive stain.

But then air. This second wave was smaller than the first had been.

Kip popped to his feet, reaching for the lens holster on his left hip. If yellow was out of balance, that meant… If the center of the spectrum was out of balance, it could be out of balance only with the ends of the spectrum. Kip’s lens holster had seven pairs of spectacles, ending at sub-red and superviolet, which balanced each other.

But there was one color beyond sub-red: Teia’s color, paryl. In legend, there was another in the opposite direction, beyond superviolet: chi. Kip had no idea how he’d draft chi. Hell, all he knew about drafting paryl was that Teia’s eyes went so wide open the black of her pupils took over the entire eye. Lashing one hand onto the line that held the foreyard to the figurehead, Kip moved forward as far as he could.

There was no third wave. A bit of luck, finally.

“Breaker! Whatever you’re going to do, do it fast!” Cruxer yelled.

The sea had gone still, again. An unnatural flatness that defied reason after the titanic waves that had just passed.

Lightning passed low over the waves to sizzle against the galley’s hull. For the first time Kip could recall, he saw fear in Cruxer’s eyes as they both realized that the next pillar of fire and light was going to spring up directly beneath the galley.

There was no way the ship or anyone in it would survive.

Kip turned to the waves. He stared straight down and widened his eyes, wider, despite the pain, despite the brightness. Into sub-red, and then beyond. It was like opening his mouth too wide, discomfort turned to pain, and the light stabbed daggers into his face.

And wider.

And wider still.

He almost gagged—and then paryl snapped into focus as if it had been waiting for him.